Tuesday, July 21, 2009

[Cookie 028] Amaretti Crisps

I have a very hard time falling for the so called "healthy" cookie. I simply do not believe it exists, and if it does, it probably doesn't taste that good or simply isn't really a cookie. Sure, I've seen a fair share of vegan recipes, ones fortified with 30 pounds of whole grains, and those that substitute butter with various low-calorie remedies, but I am still not convinced. I do not want my cookie to try and be something it isn't: a cookie, by definition, cannot--nay SHOULD not--be good for you. That's half the fun of eating one, right?

Right. But, having said that, there are indeed a few recipes in The Book that happen to be ever so slightly more healthful than the others. Generally speaking, cookies that are crumbly and sandy have more butter in them than others do because in order to achieve this crumbly texture, butter is needed to break up the glucose strands in the flour, thereby giving the cookies the distinctly brittle quality (think Classic Shortbread...). Meringues, on the other hand, have no butter whatsoever, and instead rely heavily on egg whites. And now we come to my cookie du jour: the Amaretti Crisps I made, again with my father, were completely devoid of butter, and perhaps on the "lighter" side of the cookie-nutrition spectrum.

The fat in these cookies comes entirely from the excessively huge amount of toasted almonds in them, which are ground up with confectioners' sugar. Then you add a bit of almond extract (not Amaretto, in fact, which is much too mild in almond flavor) and then fold in only 2 egg whites. This is not when you are supposed to drop the glass bowl that you had the almond mixture in on top of the fluffy egg whites and squash them to oblivion. That is not advisable.

Aside from that little fumble of mine, the cookies came out very delicious, just not as airy as I had expected. Piping the dough into Os is a little tedious at times, but the recipe as a whole is very quick and easy. One issue I ran into was the baking time: my cookies were golden and hard in almost as little as half the time suggested (15 minutes, or so). So, keep an eye on these babies! If you pull them out of the oven in time, you should have some cute little cookies that look like either oversized cheerios, onion rings, or both.

And they are just too too easy to play with! So here's to fun, "healthy" cookies--and to playing with your food.

Amaretti CrispsMakes 20

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups sliced almonds (about 5 1/2 ounces)

1 cup confectioners' sugar

2 large egg whites

1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread almonds in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet, and toast in oven until lightly browned and fragrant, 7 to 9 minutes. Remove from oven; let cool.

Combine almonds and sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade, and grind to a fine powder. Transfer to a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into almond mixture; fold in almond extract.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Transfer almond mixture to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain tip. Pipe twenty 2-inch rings onto prepared sheet, about 1 inch apart. Bake until golden brown and firm to the touch, about 25 minutes. Remove from oven, and immediately transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

These cookies are so cute! The shape is so fun. I enjoy you blog so much that I also have an award for you. You can copy and paste it from my post today,http://mykentuckyhome-kim.blogspot.com/

I think it is so great that your Dad bakes with you. My mom, my daughter and I have a cookbook where we all write what we think of the recipes. We sign and date it and sometimes comment on the fun we had. Something like that is a great keepsake for later.

Yeah, I was thinking about that shape - that round O with all it's curves. All its hundreds upon millions of curves. All the tiny little pieces that make a curve. And how wonderful that is - how wonderful that you could make that into a cookie. The curve of the C and the U in the word curve, and the curve of the C and the O and the O in the word cookie. Combined, they spell CUCOO or perhaps COCOU. As we eat the curves, our inner curves are stimulated. The curve of my intestine. The fat I absorb from the cookie in fact enriches my exterior curves. And how when you think about it, there's really nothing that doesn't have a curve. Obama, for instance. This masterfully executed bonbon is in fact a bold political statement.

hi. I just finished cleaning up the kitchen. so I tried these cookies and they were a bit of a disaster. as soon as I piped em into circles they started spreading and spreading and spreading.....i ended up with flat disks :(.....im still gonna eat em....wht happend??!?!.....only thing i can think of is that my almonds were short by 20grams....and i know that my egg whites were stiff enough because I tunrned the bowl upside down......AND im having trouble getting them off the baking paper....so have left em covered till tommoro morning.....

hi. I just finished cleaning up the kitchen. so I tried these cookies and they were a bit of a disaster. as soon as I piped em into circles they started spreading and spreading and spreading.....i ended up with flat disks :(.....im still gonna eat em....wht happend??!?!.....only thing i can think of is that my almonds were short by 20grams....and i know that my egg whites were stiff enough because I tunrned the bowl upside down......AND im having trouble getting them off the baking paper....so have left em covered till tommoro morning.....

Now What's All This About?

Ok so I had this great idea back in February 2009 to bake all the recipes in the Martha Stewart Cookie Cookbook, and guess what--I FAILED!

I will make every recipe, all 175 of them, before I graduate.

I will make more recipes, maybe all of them, but now I live a life of leisure where I am not so hard on myself. Ya know, I'm really into the c'est-la-vie-live-and-let-live-YOLO-hang-in-there-one-day-at-a-time-started-from-the-bottom-now-we-here lifestyle now. So we'll see where this goes.

Oh, and yes I started this blog before that movie Julie & Julia came out, so don't try and be a smart-ass.

I'm very bad at responding to comments (read: I don't respond to comments at all), so if you have a question, or want to just strike up a conversation about anything at all (new recipes? wood carving? wiffle ball?) just shoot me an email: everylastcookie@gmail.com